Strategy: Master Data Management

Everyone wants to turn raw stats into knowledge in real time—but how do you do that if you don’t have a handle on the data itself? Imagine a company that manufactures steel widgets and provides online sales to the public and bulk wholesale to major suppliers. A customer orders some widgets online and pays with a credit card. When the customer receives the product, the final bill is different from the quote given during the purchase, resulting in more money is charged to the credit card. It turns out that the price of the item on the customer front end is less than the actual cost on the back-end billing system.

The problem could have been avoided with a single data record for widget prices that’s referenced by both the front- and back-end systems. Seems like a no-brainer, and in fact, a whole industry has emerged to offer IT ways to deal with authoritative data sources. In this report, we’ll discuss the concept of “master data” and ways to make it work for you, not against you. (S3050711)